When Reform high command gathered in the boardroom of their Millbank headquarters last Tuesday, the meeting was supposed to be to select candidates in their 120 most winnable seats and choose dozens of campaign managers. It went on for six hours, as party chiefs instead addressed a growing sense of unease that the great momentum of 2025 has been lost.

A source familiar with the discussions reveals that Chris Bruni-Lowe, Nigel Farage’s pollster and message man, has been concerned for months that Reform needs to do something big to ‘take back control’. ‘Chris challenged people, saying things aren’t working the way they need to,’ the source says. ‘James Orr [the head of policy], Rob Jenrick [the shadow chancellor] and Zia [Yusuf, the home affairs spokesman] were all asked for their best ideas, but nothing much was forthcoming.’ It was at this point, the source says, that Farage said words to the effect of: ‘It’s time to put my own testicles on the line.’ A Reform source says: ‘Since about February there has been a growing feeling that we were becoming a party which was no longer in command of its own destiny as we would wish to be. Restore is growing. Every innovation we made in political technology was nicked and adopted by the other parties.’

It was at this point he said words to the effect of: ‘It’s time to put my own testicles on the line’

It was at this point he said words to the effect of: ‘It’s time to put my own testicles on the line’

Farage’s desire to act was intensified by reports in the Sunday Times over the weekend that his friend ‘Posh George’ Cottrell, a convicted fraudster, had paid for his security before he became an MP and let Farage stay in his London home – neither of which Farage had declared as benefits in kind to the parliamentary authorities. He was already under fire for failing to register a £5 million gift from the billionaire Christopher Harborne, whose crypto interests he has backed as party leader. Both matters are now the subject of investigations by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards.

The final straw came when Sky News and other broadcasters ‘doorstepped’ Farage’s........

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